


You've got the love

by Anihan (Nakagami)



Series: Jim and John, and Moran watches on. [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Fem!Teen!John, I tried to write fluff, Instead... I wrote this, Johann's POV, Manipulation, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Other, POV Third Person Limited, Unreliable Narrator, okay?, this is child abuse, this is not fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:57:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakagami/pseuds/Anihan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(This is part 9, not part 8! No significant spoilers to part 8, can be read first without difficulty.)</p>
<p>This is about Jim being a single parent and raising a little girl. He says something fairly bland and she gets her feelings hurt. Then, pretending to give a shit about her feelings, he makes grandiose promises and declarations of love to win her trust. Just a little bit, she believes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've got the love

 

Johann starts a blog and entitles it: **What it feels like to be someone's possession.** Every post is friends-locked and she's never accepted a request, so perhaps it feels a bit empty. But at least it's safe.

 

* * *

 

(Untitled)

I've had a rough seven years. I know I know, I say that at the start of every post, but I mean it. Today I discovered some neat people on Tumblr and I had a really good time and I felt happy at the end of it. Like, really happy. I wanted to enjoy that feeling, share it a little maybe. I felt good. So when I went to my “father”-figure at ten o'clock bed time, I smiled when I told him the time.

I smiled, okay! I was trying to be **_nice!_**  This was a big deal for me! It was supposed to be a our-little-joke, time for bed, whee sort of moment, but it didn't turn out that way at all. His face got all scrunched and he frowned and grimaced (you don't know his face, LJ, he's got the most unbelievable expressions you could never believe) before he met my eyes. I knew right then that being happy around him was a mistake. It always is.

He said, "I know. You should be in bed already. I don't know why you do this; I don't know why you come alive so late every night. _Every. single. night_."

I don't even know why it bothered me so much. It just did, I guess. And he wasn't happy about it. He wasn't happy with me at all. I guess it wasn't so much what he said as why he said it, because he didn't do anything to me, he never does anymore, but what it felt like he was implying hurt a lot. It was like me being happy was a problem for him or something. Like the time of day made it inappropriate for me to smile. Like any form of mirth was a thing to be punished after 5pm. Like, okay, fine, sorry for acting my age for once. Jeez. 

OK. Maybe that came out a bit dramatic. Maybe all of that drama Jim spews is catching or something because _I can’t help it_.

Maybe it just **feels** dramatic. Like maybe for once a little love got through the ice and I was ok with being warm until he had to come right back in with a bucket of water over my head. My heart. Whatever. But it hurt. That's the truth of the matter. I wasn't expecting it, I wasn't prepared to be attacked for how I felt, and it hurt.

 

* * *

 

"John!" The voice is coming from the kitchen; Jim, of course, Moran never uses that name. Here Johann pauses in writing the blog post. Her peck-and-tap typing skills have made even this short post an achievement and any distraction is likely to throw her off her game. "John, it's time for tea!"

Now that she's concentrating it is easy to hear Jim working on supper in the next room, fixing 'sketti stir fry' (whatever that is) and hand-wrapped wontons. There's bound to be actual tea involved because Jim _always_ does that, says 'tea' when he means 'dinner' but only if he's going to make a pot of tea as well, and he'd say 'supper' if there's nothing but food and reduced fat milk on the menu.

Jim calls again, angrier this time, and Johann flinches. There was no reason for him to yell, not when he'd be maybe four steps away if he was using the closest burner, but he'd yelled anyway. And why, if he could just lean over to chat? Was it just for the sake of raising his voice? Anger spikes in the curve of the blonde's clenched fists, despair the a slow-burning rage underneath Johann's skin, and one thought, a single concept, plays on repeat inside her brain.

This is all Jim's fault, everything, all of it. Every cause of her unhappiness can be directly related back to Jim. The bastard orchestrated this entire mess and all he wants is for her to rot in it, he even says as much when he's getting wistful, sentimental over how  _lovely_ she is when she burns low, hating almost everything there is to hate about being alive. 

Johann is aware of acting irrationally. There's half a dozen things she's leaving vulnerably unfinished but she's aware of it as she stands (hitting her head on the desk and cursing, swerving out of the way to get to her feet, undeterred in her need to flee) and leaves the laptop where it is underneath and knowing that it was a bad idea doesn't stop her. She is aware of being childish as she storms into the bathroom and hesitates (and hates herself for hesitating, even if the glass ornaments of the solar system Jim had put up for her would really be a waste to break). The door ends up shutting less-than-gently instead of being slammed.

(Even if it might feel good to hurt him back sometime, the end result isn't worth it.) 

The tub's set up like it always is, a careful second home to the teen now with a phone charger and a secret food stash. Johann swallows bile as she settles into the tub, shifts around until the bag of Cheetos is not being squashed by her shoulders, but her mind whispers, poisonous, _Nothing's secret when you have to ask for anything to be brought in for you,_ and she extinguishes the thought with equal venom. Her diary is secret. Her diary is password protected and she uses Chrome incognito so Jim can't track her, and no one even knows she has a LiveJournal account. It is meant to be  _safe._

The LiveJournal that she'd probably left open on her laptop underneath the computer desk.

The soft knock on the bathroom door answered that question. Jim's timing is so perfect sometimes she thinks he's a mindreader, able to tell just when she's hit rock bottom in order to shove the fact in her face. The knock was sedate and calm, practically tentative. _Fuck_ , she thinks, and shoves her face into the scant bedding. She hadn't locked it. There's no chance to hide.

"John. Come out now, John. I need to talk to you."

Johann doesn't move. The door opens a moment later and she rolls onto her side so that she doesn't have to look at him.

Who knows how long she spends wishing, willing, hoping and pleading in her head for him to go away, but he doesn't. He never will and she knows it. When Jim crawls into the tub with her Johann makes room for him and doesn't complain because yeah, he might be invading her privacy, but he could do a whole lot worse. It is a tight fit back-to-chest and the Cheetos are truly being powdered now, but she does feel a little better when Jim doesn't immediately speak.

He takes a deep breath (scenting her hair? He should know the smell, he chose it, some 'cherry blossom essential oils' crap that makes her _feel_ like flowers, nevermind smelling like them) and arms wrap around her shoulders and pull Johann close, as if she's precious (which doesn't help her dismiss the flower self image). A nose gets lost in her hair and she flinches because it tickles, but Jim gives her some space and merely hugs her.

Holds her.

There's enough time spent snuggling for her to feel embarrassed when she realizes he's waiting for her to make the next move, not that she knows what she should do about anything anymore. There's never been anything more than the illusion of choice, she knows it, so why bother making a decision when Jim's already planned for every eventuality?

But Jim does love watching Johann react and this time is no different, he just waits for her to realize but she doesn't notice at all that he is crying until its already soaked into her hair, until liquid has begun to slide down around her neck and up her jaw to pool at and then fall from her chin to land on her forearms braced on the side of the tub. A hand goes to her neck, now wet, and she blinks at the fingers in surprise.  _Those are not my tears_  she thinks, and it is only _then_  that she realizes that his deep, even breaths are too deep, too even, too controlled to be autonomous.

Johann wants to say _You don't have to cry for me_.

But she also doesn't want to speak to him at all, so she doesn't.

Jim holds her tight and cries and after a fashion she thinks, _um, this is kind of awkward,_ even as part of her traitorous brain way back in the corner says, _yes, well, this is also kind of nice._  Maybe he _is_ a mindreader because he talks just as soon as she has that thought, and Johann doesn't flinch this time when he speaks and both of them feel as if 'not flinching' is some sort of accomplishment.

"I'm sorry if I've made you think less of yourself," Jim growls out with a low, hoarse voice that Johann doesn't quite believe is genuine, not with that effusive an amount of fake tears. "You know you're special to me. I love you for who you are and who you have always been, not because of my ideals but because of you. I know I've never been the best of persons, but I had never wished you to feel that of yourself. Ever. None of it."

Johann tilts her face into the sheet, and she can feel the hardness of the tub underneath the sweetness of his lies.

"Are you just saying things you think I want to hear so that I'll feel more comfortable around you?"

"No. But is it working?"

"Maybe a little."

"That's not good enough."

Jim's arms tighten until her ribs grind together, and then he squeezes a little further, until Johann clenches her jaw at the sudden pain (she refuses to protest, refuses to react) and Jim acknowledges what he's done, what he's doing to her, by letting go with a patently false gasp. Both arms slide free of Johann's middle and Jim sits up, doing a full 360 in less than five seconds, well-meaning despair-cum-abhorrent glee in the blink of an eye.

Johann buries her face in the bag of Cheetos (crumbs, still edible but significantly more messy) and thinks  _Cheese. Cheese is always good. Cheese can't hurt me._

_Unless I become lactose intolerant. Which is, according to Sherlock, statistically more likely than not for my genetic heritage. Ok, don't think about cheese. Cheese won't always be good. Don't think about things that aren't constants, don't rely on the temporary (or the likely temporary) because you'll be left at a disadvantage when it is gone. Although I do love milk._

Jim is not good: That is not a temporary fact. Jim is smiling. (Of course he is, Johann can't see his face but she knows how her shoulders tense when he is smiling at her so she knows he is smiling at her right now even if she doesn't know how her body knows when and how to react.) "Oh _John,_ " the man demurs fondly, warm, _delighted._

"You've gone too far now, Father," she mumbles, muffled in dairy, whey, cornmeal, maltodextrin... "You know I don't believe you."

"You're a right poet, aren't you now, my sweet. Ahh let's see, how about last Thursday: 'My happiness, my life, my joy; it is fragile, it is wicked soft, it is thin: You'd break it all too easily with all of your lies.' Your little diary is full of such treats! Do you remember saying that?"

Johann's jaw clenches and Jim sucks in a breath through his nostrils.

"Have you been reading my diary every day since the start...?"

"Do you still feel that way about me?"

Johann shifts, belly to the floor of the tub and wrists crossed over the back of her neck, protecting her weak spot with her back turned to him completely. She doesn't cry. She breathes in evenly and breathes out calmly and does anything except open her mouth.

"John."

Jim closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see her flinch; Her hands unclench, that's how she knows his facial expressions, even if she still doesn't know how she knows. (She could be wrong. She doesn't care. Her face is getting sore, pressed up against...whatever material bathtubs are made out of. What are they made out of? Sherlock would know, Sherlock knows everything. ( _Don't think of Sherlock._ )) Johann starts. Jim had still been talking but she'd missed most of what he'd said, catching only the end of his tirade.

"You don't have to say anything at all, I'll fix it for you. I will. I'll fix it." His voice brightens considerably and her nails instantly carve into her palms. "Just you wait and see, I've got just the thing to fix us."

The sudden absence of Jim's voice is grating. The sound of Jim standing. Scrape, psh, soles against the lino. The bathroom door doesn't close. The bedroom door doesn't close.

The silence of waiting increases.

A key scrapes in a lock. (Door to the den, must be, the only one with a key-lock.) A moment passes and then  _that_ door  _does._ Footsteps pander closer, back through the bedroom (the door shuts) and into her bathroom (again, closed behind him). The end result is that Jim returns in moments, armed with food and ready to kneel at the side of the tub if only it would encourage benediction, or so she's positive he'd say if she dared to ask him at all.

Johann swallows and sits up to see his face for herself, muscles unable to relax, unable to remain tense, and perhaps her body and soul are one at this moment, both confused and unable to make up their mind about how to react.

Jim tosses a Freddo bar into Johann's lap and waits for her to consciously take it in. She eyes the purple wrapper, Cadbury logo, the smiling green frog face on the front.

"I've brought you a gift," he chirps, as if it isn't obvious. It takes a moment for Johann's mind to reboot.

There's surprise at first, of course, and then a sort of dewy condensation at her eyes that never quite coalesces. "Freddo Frog." Breath hisses out between her teeth as if Johann just can't help herself, and then she takes it in hand because there's really nothing else she can do but hyperventilate and kind of cuddle the candy against her chest. Jim is practically background noise at that moment. "My grandfather used to bring them home all the time, a Freddo for me and a Chomp for Henry."

"Never liked them meself," Jim confides conspiratorially, and Johann huffs with laughter and smiles a bit down at the candy in her hands. The smile falters.

Jim waits. Johann breaks first.

"Once, just once, Grampa got me a Caramello Koala and I cried for like a week because I thought the frog had been replaced. Henry gave me his Chomp to make me feel better, only it didn't help because I really just hated caramel quite a lot."

The man laughs weakly (calculatedly so, unnaturally meek, it doesn't match his eyes) and the girl matches it naturally. The sound is only slightly desperate. Slowly the tension in her body is replaced by exhaustion and, just a little bit, visible to the naked eye, Johann forgives him for reading her diary. 

( _I haven't forgotten why I was mad in the first place. I'm still miffed, really I am, but this is an apology, isn't it? I_ _can be reasonable._ )

Jim is merely smiling at her when Johann looks up, warm and patient and waiting for her musings to end. He beckons her closer with one hand and she only hesitates a second, putting down the chocolate out of the way first (hidden by the crunched crunchy Cheetos, underneath so that it wouldn't melt the next time she laid down), and she folds herself out of the tub and against him in another lingering hug.

"Feel better?" Jim asks, both hands petting her hair, and she rolls her eyes, murmurs _yeah_  against his throat and nuzzles his perfumed shirt, the little fairy, and she rolls her eyes again because she's positive he would love that description. "Mm, what was that?"

"Yeah, I'm better. Thanks."

"No problem, baby girl," he breathes into her hair, and for a few moments, at least, neither of them are truly unhappy. 


End file.
